Posts

This Level of Corruption Is Unprecedented in the Modern History of the Presidency

The important part about dealing with epidemics is to deal with them early. Just like the fire department would really rather come into a building when there was smoke coming out of one window instead of when there are flames coming out of every window, because it’s a lot easier to control the fire early on, it’s much easier to control an epidemic early on.

—Dr. Don Francis, AIDS researcher, 2006.

It’s almost as though the entire bureaucratic immune system of the government is reacting to an invading virus. The worst thing any of us can do is assume that the ascent of El Caudillo del Mar-A-Lago was not the sui generis event that it clearly was, and that he, himself, is not the sui generis occupant of the White House that he clearly is, and that he has not surrounded himself with dubious quacks and hacks that are sui generis in their approach to government as they clearly are.

There is a level of intellectual—and, perhaps, literal—corruption that is unprecedented in the modern history of the presidency and that is a genuine and unique threat to democratic institutions that are the objects of destructive contempt. The man ran on chaos. He won on chaos. And now he’s governing on chaos. The checks and balances and safety valves of the Constitution—the things that, well, constitute—the immune system of this self-governing republic are facing a threat that is as different as it is lethal.

THE MAN RAN ON CHAOS. HE WON ON CHAOS. AND NOW HE’S GOVERNING ON CHAOS.The latest manifestation of this phenomenon is the sudden firing of U.S. Attorneys all over the country—specifically, those appointed by the previous administration. It is true that every president can do what this president did, and that most have. But the people who said all through the campaign that the rules changed with the elevation of Donald Trump cannot say that the rules are back now that he’s president. In addition, what he did on Friday was precipitous in the extreme and so much so that it seems to have been improvised on the spot, and that it might have been prompted by a virulent paranoia at the White House about “deep-state” saboteurs, a feeling encouraged by the hardbar caucus in Congress and pimped heavily by the conservative media auxiliaries.

By contrast, in 2009, the newly elected Barack Obama put his U.S. Attorneys in place, but he didn’t fire all of the incumbent ones all at once without having the faintest idea who their replacements might be. And this was in the wake of the naked politicization of the DOJ during the Bush Administration. From Tiger Beat On The Potomac:

“I expect that we’ll have an announcement in the next couple of weeks with regard to our first batch of U.S attorneys,” Holder said Thursday during a House Judiciary Committee hearing which stretched out over most of the day due to breaks for members’ votes. “One of the things that we didn’t want to do was to disrupt the continuity of the offices and pull people out of positions where we thought there might be a danger that that might have on the continuity—the effectiveness of the offices. But…elections matter—it is our intention to have the U.S. Attorneys that are selected by President Obama in place as quickly as they can.” Holder’s comments begin to resolve questions in the legal community about whether the new administration would hesitate to replace the chief prosecutors en masse because of the intense controversy that surrounded President George W. Bush’s unusual mid-term replacement of nine U.S. attorneys in late 2006. In addition, legal sources said some Bush appointees were looking to burrow in, in part to avoid a grim economic climate for private-sector legal jobs.But, as we are relentlessly told by people who are whistling past a considerable graveyard, Donald Trump is different. He certainly is. Already, there are serious questions about his violations of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, about how and where he got his money, about how seriously we should take his claim to have divorced himself from his business interests, and about the precise relationship he has with kleptocrats the world over, especially in Russia. In that context, his decision all at once to decapitate the Justice Department at the local level takes on a more sinister character.

And then there’s the case of Preet Bhahara, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and the scourge of the money power in New York City, which definitely includes the current president* of the United States. The man was the swamp-drainer supreme. The situation with Bharhara already is stranger than usual. In the first place, a week ago, Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III had asked Bhahara to stay on. Also, Bhahara has a number of investigations that may or may not hit too close to home at the White House, including one involving Fox News. And, as has become customary with this administration, the whole matter was handled with the delicacy of a monkey trying to fck a football. From The Washington Post:

Within the Justice Department, some are questioning whether a recent phone call from Trump to Bharara may have contributed to the decision to remove the Obama holdovers, according to a person familiar with the matter. On Thursday, a White House aide called and left a message for Bharara, saying the president wanted to speak with him, though the prospective topic of discussion was unclear. Bharara consulted his staff and determined that it would probably be a violation of Justice Department protocols for him to speak directly to the president, this person said. That protocol exists in order to prevent political interference—or the appearance of political interference — with Justice Department work.He’s shaking up Washington! He’s exploding political norms! He’s also lighting his own pants on fire. By forcing the administration to fire him, Bharara managed to maneuver the World’s Greatest Dealmaker into elevating Bharara’s profile even higher, and to draw the spotlight down on what Bhahara’s investigations, past and present. He also set up Bhahara as a free radical in our politics; the defrocked U.S. Attorney already is talking about his “absolute independence,” which ought to freeze the bowels of a lot of people with plans for the future. If, one day, we’re all talking about Senator Preet Bhahara, then the current president* will get a big assist.

HE’S SHAKING UP WASHINGTON! HE’S EXPLODING POLITICAL NORMS! HE’S ALSO LIGHTING HIS OWN PANTS ON FIRE.There’s a kind of momentum building inside and outside the government right now. For a long time, I thought the Republicans in Congress could hold out against the encroaching chaos long enough to pass their wish list, which the president* would sign, because that beats working and he doesn’t know anything. But the way they’ve botched health-care makes the congressional majorities look as though they’ve both been hit in the head with a hammer. (The mischief out in the states, however, is still ongoing, and as strong as ever.)

It’s possible that too many things are coming from too many directions for that strategy to work any more. The way you’ll know if that situation reaches a tipping point will be if the various legislative intelligence committees of the Congress looking into the Russia business give up the job either to a special prosecutor or to some sort of blue-ribbon 9/11-type commission. You want chaos? That will be chaos, and the patient may flat-line.